The Illusionist

Neil Burger's The Illusionist, based on a short story by Steven Millhauser, is a delicate film, almost a fairy tale.  The illusionist of the title, Eisenheim (Edward Norton), is a furniture-maker's son in love with a young noblewoman, Sophie (Jessica Biel).  As adolescents, they are forcibly separated when Eisenheim discovers the limits of his magic skills; when they meet again in Vienna, fifteen years later, Sophie is about to be engaged to the sadistic Crown Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell, largely invisible behind his whiskers).  Their passion rekindles, but Leopold has other plans--plans put into action by the dogged Chief Inspector Uhl (Paul Giamatti).  After Sophie dies, apparently at Leopold's hands, Eisenheim turns his magic to the task of exposing her killer...

At one level, the illusionist's art stands in for filmmaking itself: Eisenheim's special effects, which apparently erase the borders between reality and imagination, even death and life, all ultimately rely on a combination of technological know-how and visual mastery.  As Eisenheim shows Uhl early on, sometimes magic simply amounts to understanding how to see.  But magic also means knowing how to control what others see--a point integral to the mystery's solution.  (Burger plays by the rules, incidentally: we do see all the clues before the final reveal.)  At another level, though, magic also requires a willingness to play, to entertain strange combinations of diverse elements, to be "in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason."  It even requires a willingness to voluntarily look like a fool.  Leopold, our villain, is not only incapable of looking like a fool, he's also incapable of accepting anything "impure."  He wants to overthrow his father in order to save the country from a "mongrel" government--that is to say, parliamentary rule, which he associates with raw democracy--and sneers at Sophie's love for Eisenheim because of the class differences involved.  Uhl, by contrast, is an amateur magician who sincerely appreciates Eisenheim's art; his affinity for magic is inseparable from his ultimate incorruptibility.  Morality and magic go hand-in-hand.

All of the performers are fine, although Paul Giamatti's brooding, sometimes rueful Uhl is perhaps rather more interesting in the end than Edward Norton's withdrawn Eisenheim.  The film, shot in Prague, is drenched in pale sunlight tones and looks lovely; the magic tricks themselves, overseen by the legendary Ricky Jay, are CGI-enhanced but nevertheless authentic.  A fine way to spend the evening. 

Comments

[Ellen Moody]

It seems to me you overpraise _The Illusionist_. However, it has some interest.

I'd call it frivolous but expertly-done. If you go to seeexpecting to hear some ludicrously melodramatic
dialogue and camera gazing on the latest incarnation of the Scarlett
Johanssen ideal (with her lips made up to recall a vagina), it can be absorbing.

In brief, it's the closest thing in film form to a Wilkie Collins
novel I've ever experienced. The central character turns out to be a chief inspector who loses his job and place for exposing a powerful
politician, and it has much sexuality, lurid quick emotional
passionate betrayals (sudden violence), and playing many games with reality (in the film through playing with what may be done with
film). And a penumbra I'll call it of fable resonances which are
political in thrust (against our fascist militarist regimes through
the Prisoner of Zenda type story) and if you view against the grain
(or with it) the ambiguous-passive woman victim.

It shows up the sheer stupidity of the musical _Woman in White_ and
how little the producers of that understood anything of the
Collins-Mary Elizabeth Braddon type novels.

Ellen

[Heather]

I was not tempted to see this film until reading your thoughts. Thank you for posting about it!

[David]

That was a great review, LP. I'd only seen the trailer for this movie and was under the impression it was an adaptation of Robertson Davies' "World of Wonders". I don't know Millhauser's short story, but Davies' novel tells the tale of a magician named 'Eisengrim' and also plays with the illusions of magic and filmmaking.

[Roger]

Thank you for the review Good Job!